Bohdan Ziza: “A Cry from the Heart”

Bohdan Ziza, a Ukrainian artist, poet and activist, is serving a 15-year sentence for “terrorism” after pouring blue and yellow paint – the colours of the Ukrainian flag – on to a municipal administration building in Evpatoria, Crimea, his home town. He made and circulated a video of the action – on 16 May 2022, shortly after the all-out Russian invasion of Ukraine – and for that was also charged with “incitement to terrorism”.

*Bohdan Ziza. From his instagram channel*

This is Bohdan’s speech from the dock, before being sentenced by a Russian military court on 5 June last year.

Do I regret what I have done?

I am sorry that I over-reached, and that my action resulted in charges under the Article [of the Russian criminal code] on terrorism. I am sorry that my grandmother is now without the care and support that she needs. Apart from me, she has nobody. And I am sorry that I can not now help others who are close to me, who need that help now.

As for the rest: I acted according to my conscience.

And also, according to my conscience, I do not deny or disavow what I did. I behaved stupidly, and could have expressed my opinion in some other way. But did I deserve, for what I did, to be deprived of my freedom for ten years or more?

I would like to appeal to the court: do not follow the regime’s script, do not participate in these awful repressions. But obviously that would have no effect. The judges and other similar political actors are just doing what they are told.

For these reasons, I will continue to protest, even in prison. And I am well aware of the sentence I may receive, and how it may affect my health and even my life.

But am I worthy of the life that I live? Is each one of us worthy of a carefree life, when we stay silent at a time when, every day, innocent people’s lives are being taken?

This was the worst night of my life. I never experienced anything like it. I thought we would die. There were three Kinzhal rockets, and loads of Kalibrs. They fell very close, they were right above our building. The building shook – several explosions, one after the other. For the first time in the war there was a white glow, the sky was white from the explosions. It was as though we were in a trench, not in our own home. At one moment I thought that it was all flying towards us. There was the very clear sound of a rocket, and then a very powerful explosion. But we have been lucky, again, and we are still alive.

That was a message from my sister, in Kyiv, who had to live through another night of bombardment of the city by the Russian armed forces.

When she went out in the morning, she learned that one of the rockets had hit the next-door building.

For many people, this war that is going on now is happening over there somewhere, far away.

One of the staff at the pre-trial detention centre said to me: “Bloody hell, I am sick of this war. Whenever you turn on the TV, it’s more of the same.” I answered that the war is not over and so you can not get away from it. And then he said: “Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s just that everything is getting more expensive. The cost of running a car now!”

And that’s the problem, here in Russia. For you, this war is an inconvenience, an irritation. You try to wait it out, living your usual life, trying to avoid bad news, and in that way simply not valuing simple things, not valuing the fact that you can wake up in a warm bed, in a warm flat, and say to someone who is dear to you, “good morning”. At a time when in the country next door, millions of people are losing their homes, losing their loved ones, when whole cities are being destroyed. Every day. That’s the everyday reality for Ukrainian citizens now.

In theory, Russian people’s failure to act could be explained, if only what is happening was not being done by Russian hands. The hands of those who bear arms, and those who don’t do anything to stop them. Every day that an ordinary Russian person carries on, reasoning that this is all politics and doesn’t concern him, and living his normal life, he adds money to the Russian Federation budget and in that way sponsors this criminal war.

Of course there are those who do not support what is happening, who take action, who are not silent participants: journalists, various activists – those who refuse to keep quiet.

My action was a cry from the heart, from my conscience, to those who were and are afraid – just as I was afraid – but who also did not want, and do not want, this war. Each of us separately are small, unnoticed people – but people whose loud actions can be heard. Yes, it is frightening. Yes, you can end up behind bars – where I, for sure, did not plan to be. Even for these words I could face a new criminal case. But it is better to be in prison with a clear conscience, than to be a wretched, dumb beast on the outside.

I am also an ordinary citizen of my country – Ukraine – who is not used to keeping quiet when confronted with lawlessness. I am not alone here today in this “goldfish bowl” [slang for the glass cage in which the accused appears in Russian courts]. There are more than 200 people with me: Ukrainian political prisoners, serving time in Russian prisons on fabricated charges. Many of them are Crimean Tatars, who are once again faced with repression by Russia. I am myself half Crimean Tatar, and angry at our people’s suffering.

Many Ukrainians are serving time in Russian prisons simply because they are Ukrainians, and were somewhere that the Russian state thought they should not be. In Russian prisons people are beaten up for speaking in Ukrainian. Or not even for speaking it, but simply for understanding it. Bastards among the guards at pre-trial detention centres or other places where people are imprisoned address prisoners in Ukrainian, to see if they get a reaction, to see if they provoke an answer or a response. If a person reacts, they beat him up.

Those who so passionately seek “Nazis” in Ukraine have not opened their eyes to the Nazism that has emerged in Russia, with its ephemeral “Russian world”, with which armed forces have come to us, to try to extirpate Ukrainian identity.

People in prison suffer in the most terrible conditions. Many of them are elderly. More than 40 people [in the pre-trial detention centre] have critical health problems, and can not access the medical treatment that they need. People die in prison. They are not criminals. Deport them from the country! Why do you keep them here?

I am no kind of terrorist. It sounds ridiculous to even say that. I am a person with morals and principles, who would rather give his own life than take the life of another person. But I am not ready to give my life to the Federal Penal Enforcement Service of the Russian Federation.

I declare a hunger strike, and demand that I be stripped of my Russian citizenship. I demand that all Ukrainian political prisoners be freed. If anything happens to me in prison, I want the world to know that it happened only because I am a Ukrainian, who took a stand against the war in his country.

And if this is my last word, let it be my last word in the Russian language. The last thing I will say publicly in Russian in this country, as long as this regime lasts. The reddish regime.

[Ziza then switched from Russian to Ukrainian, and recited this poem. Explanation of names mentioned below.]

I am not Red, I am Crimson!

I am not playing to the gallery!

These are not rhymes, they are wounds!

And I am not Melnik, I am Bandera!

The weather: it’s snowing in my summer,

From Symonenko’s motherland

I go to the end, like Teliha!

And I believe in wings, like Kostenko!

□ Note. The Ukrainian for “crimson” (“bahrianyi”), was also the pseudonym of Ivan Lozoviaha, a dissident writer and political exile from 1932 to his death in 1963. Andriy Melnik and Stepan Bandera were leaders of Ukrainian nationalist partisan military formations in the 1940s. Vasyl Symonenko was a Ukrainian poet, active in dissident circles until his death in 1963. Olena Teliha was a feminist poet, member of a nationalist underground cell in Nazi-occupied Kyiv, killed by the Nazis in 1942. Lina Kostenko is a Soviet-era dissident who has continued working as a poet and writer in post-Soviet Ukraine.

□ This is translated from the Russian text on the Graty news site, with reference to the Crimea Human Rights Group report. Thanks to M for help with translation.

□ What happened next. After Bohdan Ziza made this speech to the Southern District Military Court in Rostov, Russia, on 5 June 2023, he was sentenced by the judge, Roman Plisko, to 15 years in a high-security penal colony. Shortly after that, Ziza wrote to Zmina, the Ukrainian human rights organisation. He ended his hunger strike and then wrote to Uznik on-line, which coordinates correspondence with anti-war prisoners in Russia, to thank them and the many supporters who had written to him.

On 27 September 2023 Bohdan Ziza’s appeal against his sentence was rejected by Maksym Panin at the military court of appeal in Vlasikha, near Moscow.

Bohdan, who marked his 29th birthday on 23 November, was moved to Vladimir prison. On 5 December, the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group reported that he had been visited by his lawyer and is in good spirits. He is sharing a cell with Appaz Kurtamet, another Crimean Tatar political prisoner, and was serving time in a punishment cell after stating that he is not a criminal and refusing to wear prison clothing.

□ What we can do. Advice to non-Russian speakers who wish to write to Bohdan and Appaz is included in this article on the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group site. The group also appeals to other countries’ diplomats to help Ukrainian citizens in Russian prisons (although this does not include Bohdan, since he was compelled, as a teenager, to take Russian citizenship after Crimea was annexed by Russia in 2014).

□ More information. Solidarity Zone (see facebook, telegram and twitter) supports anti-war activists jailed in Russia. The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, Crimea SOS and Zmina are among the Ukrainian human rights organisation that publicise the fate of more than 180 Crimean political prisoners in Russian jails. SP, 17 January 2024.

□ Bohdan Ziza’s own art and poetry is on instagram and youtube.

Source: “Crimean political prisoner Bohdan Ziza: ‘My anti-war action was a cry from the heart’,” People and Nature, 17 January 2024. Thanks to my friend and comrade Simon Pirani for his outstanding work here and elsewhere, and for his kind encouragement to repost this important document of Ukrainian resistance to Russian fascism.

When the Taxi Driver Asked Where You’re From

Eva Morozova, “When the taxi driver asked where you’re from”

When the taxi driver asked where you’re from

(If you’re not in the mood to explain why you still haven’t ousted the president)

[Image of Russian Federation foreign travel passport briefly flashes onscreen]

1. He, he, he! Huh?

2. Could you repeat your question? [in English]

3. Sorry, I don’t speak languages. [in English]

4. Artists have no nationality.

5. My ancestors came from the lower reaches of Transnistria.

6. From here and there, brother.

7. I’m not a fan of the concept of the state per se.

8. I’m from Rio de Janeiro.

9. When God made the earth, there were no borders.

10. From Siberia.

11. Look, a flock of pigeons!

[Pigeons drop the last passenger into “neutral waters.” Image of Russian Federation foreign travel passport flashes onscreen again.]

Source: Eva Morozova (YouTube), 28 June 2023. Translated, where necessary, by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Tatiana Kosinova for the heads-up and so much more.

@george.spb wrote the following comment when Eva Morozova posted the cartoon, above, on their Instagram page:

I always say that I am from Russia, even though I am [an ethnic] Georgian. I have never got a single unfriendly look. At most, they might somehow make a good-natured joke about it. All foreigners are well aware that not all people in Russia support the military action, especially those who have left. The only thing I won’t do is demonstrate Russian symbols or sing the Russian anthem until the war is over, a correct assessment of what happened has been made, and the perpetrators have been justly punished. I can’t change anything else; I was born there. And if a person is biased about it, then it’s not my problem anymore.

@intelligent_beauty_paris wrote:

It happened once here:
– Vous êtes d’où? – Where are you from?
– De la Russie. From Russia.
– C’est pas grave! / No big deal / It happens/ Don’t worry about it!

Source: eva__ morozova__ (Instagram), 27 June 2023. Translated from the Russian and the French by the Russian Reader

YALTA, Crimea, Aug 29 (Reuters) – In years past, Siberian Viktor Motorin could hop on a plane and arrive in Crimea just four hours later to relax at his holiday apartment. Now he must fly first to Moscow and then spend a day and a half on the train.

The war in Ukraine, now 18 months old, is making it harder for many Russians to reach their favourite summer haunts in the Black Sea region of Crimea, which Moscow seized and annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

And safety is a factor for some, especially after two major Ukrainian attacks since last October on the 19 km (12 mile) Crimean Bridge that links Russia by road and rail to the peninsula.

But after weighing up such concerns, Motorin, from the city of Khanty-Mansiysk in western Siberia, said he decided that making his annual trip was still a risk well worth taking.

“We calculated that it was reasonably safe, especially when my colleagues had already come here in June, early July. They said it was all calm here with no problems on the Crimea Bridge. The goods, the prices, everything is like before,” he said.

[…]

Source: “Russian tourism in Crimea is down, but many still shrug off risks,” Reuters, 29 August 2023

In 2022, the year when Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, more than 4,300 people renounced their Russian citizenship, the highest such figure for the last three years. Among them were several major Russian businessmen, including [former] Troika Dialog CEO Ruben Vardanyan, venture capitalist Yuri Milner, and Tinkoff Bank founder Oleg Tinkov. However, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that the increase in “refuseniks” was due to the pandemic that raged earlier, claiming that “there are no particular changes in the numbers of requests to withdraw from Russian citizenship from abroad.” And the Russian Interior Ministry recently proposed reviewing the cases of people who have renounced Russian citizenship, that is, theoretically, a person’s citizenship could be forcibly reinstated. Farida Kurbangaleyeva talked to people who decided not to be Russian nationals anymore and found out why it mattered to them.

“If I have the sudden urge to live in Russia I’ll get a residence permit”

Andrei Kreinin, USA, renounced his Russian citizenship

I’ve wanted to emigrate to the USA since I was fifteen, when I saw the good old American movie Short Circuit 2. Spoiler alert: it ends with a scene of the main characters taking the oath of citizenship. I went to the States many times on a tourist visa, and in 2011 my family and I won a green card and moved to Chicago. In Moscow, I worked in telecommunications and I got a job in the same field in our new home.

The decision to renounce citizenship was made on February 25, 2022—after the brutal bombing of Kharkov, when people were hiding in the subway there. Firstly, because there is such a thing as a conscience, and secondly, my mother was born in Kharkov, and it was impossible for me to remain a Russian national. My family said, “We won’t do this. If you want to, do it, but then don’t pine for Russia.” I said I understood them perfectly. I had a couple of friends from Russia who called me bad words on social media, and I had to ban them. But mostly the attitude ranged from neutral to understanding: “It’s your business, Andrei.”

To renounce your citizenship, you need to do two main things—deregister your place of residence [in Russia, where everyone is required to register their place of residence] and get a paper stating that you owe no back taxes in the Russian Federation.

They say that it can be difficult to deregister remotely, so in June 2022 I flew to Russia. I took care of transferring my real estate and deregistering from my apartment. Basically, I covered all the important bases to the max. Before the trip, I carefully monitored the situation: I understood that there would be a mobilization. I actually thought it would be announced on May 9 [celebrated as Victory Day in Russia].

When I had collected all the paperwork, I took it to the consulate in New York. It did not go smoothly. About three months later, I received a letter saying my application had not been approved, because, according to the Interior Ministry’s databases, I was still registered—although I even had a stamp in my [internal] passport stating I had been deregistered. Consequently, I spent two or three sleepless nights, due to the time difference, trying to get through to the proper authorities in Russia. They said, “Send us your application again and a photo of the discharge stamp.” I sent them, and two days later I received a reply that I had been removed from the residence register.

Andrei Kreinin
Photo courtesy of Mr. Kreinin via Republic

I forwarded the whole thing to the consulate again, hoping that they would accept the documents online. But they said, “No, you’ll have to come to New York again.” I went again, resubmitted [my application], and after another two and half months I was informed that my application had been approved. I was told to report to the consular department and hand over my [internal and foreign travel] passports, which I did.

I have heard that the [Russian] state does not like people like me, because it is one thing to renounce Russian citizenship in a country where it is a necessary condition for obtaining the local citizenship, for example in Germany or the Netherlands, and another thing when you could retain your Russian citizenship, but you renounce it of your own free will.

But I didn’t notice any particularly negative attitude on the part of the staff at the Russian consulate. They behaved absolutely normally.

When I was in Russia, I forgot to withdraw my military registration. I had to call the military enlistment office. “This is how it is, guys, I’m renouncing my citizenship,” I said. Surprisingly, they did not yell at me or call me a traitor to the motherland, although I expected it. They just said, “Theoretically, we don’t do this sort of thing, but as soon as you complete the procedure, send us your military registration card, a copy of the certificate of renunciation of citizenship, a copy of your US passport, and a written request to be removed from military registration.” There is no mail service between the US and Russia nowadays. I had to make use of different “private couriers”: there are special Facebook groups for [arranging pickups and deliveries of letters and parcels]. Three weeks later, a letter from the military enlistment office addressed to me arrived in Moscow, saying I’d been removed from the register.

I have now applied for a Russian visa, which is granted to US citizens for up to three years. Not that I was planning to go there, but, as the Ukrainians say, schob bulo [“just in case”]. Plus, my father is still in Russia. He has already sent me an invitation to me, but he says, “Just please don’t come.”

I have no plans to reinstate my Russian citizenship under any circumstances. If I have the sudden urge to live in Russia, I can easily get a residence permit. It’s more than enough for me.

As my experience in dealing with the Russian Federation shows, it is better, paradoxically, to be a foreigner—you have fewer obligations.

A residence permit grants a person the same privileges as citizenship [sic], except the right to vote. On the other hand, no one can force me to do military service. The civil service will also be closed to me, but I’ve never aspired to join it either in Russia or the US.

[…]

Source: Farida Kurbangeleyeva, “‘It is better to be a foreigner in the Russian Federation—there are fewer obligations’: seven stories of people who relinquished Russian citizenship,” Republic, 28 August 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader, who lived on a resident permit in Russia for many years and knows for a fact that Mr. Kreinin is dead wrong about the “privileges” of living there in that tenuous capacity.

The grandfather of renowned Crimean Tatar historian Shukri Seitumerov was executed during Stalin’s Terror for supposed ‘counter-revolutionary terrorist propaganda’. Eighty years later, Russia’s FSB came for Shukri’s two elder sons, Seitumer and Osman Seitumerov, as well as his wife Lilia’s brother, with the ‘terrorism’ charges they faced no less politically motivated. Such arrests and subsequent sentences of up to 20 years are part of Russia’s ongoing attack on the Crimean Solidarity human rights movement and are also simply ‘good for FSB statistics’. For the next round of victims, armed Russian FSB burst into the Seitumerov home yet again at 4 a.m. on 24 August, this time taking Shukri and Lilia’s last son away from them.Abdulmedzhit Seitumerov is just 23 and became a father less than 2 months ago.

Armed and masked enforcement officers carried out multiple ‘searches’ in the early hours of 25 August, with six Crimean Tatars taken away. All are now facing the huge sentences that have become a standard part of Russa’s most cynical conveyor belt of repression in occupied Crimea. Ruslan Asanov (b. 1975); Remzi Nimetulayev (b. 1985); Seidamet Mustafayev (b. 1995); Abdulmedzhit Seitumerov (b. 1999); Ametkhan Umerov (b. 1986) and Eldar Yakubov (b. 1980) are Crimean Solidarity activists who had previously faced administrative prosecution for peaceful acts of solidarity with other political prisoners.

This is one of the many identical elements in these cases which have been internationally condemned as politically motivated persecution. The ‘armed searches’ are invariably carried out without the men’s lawyers allowed to be present, and with the FSB most often bringing the so-called ‘prohibited religious literature’ that they then claim to have found. The men are generally forced to the ground, often in front of their terrified children, and then taken away as though criminals, although none is accused of any recognizable crime.

The charges are equally predictable with the Crimean Tatars accused solely of unproven ‘involvement’ in Hizb ut-Tahrir. This peaceful transnational Muslim organization was declared ‘terrorist’ by Russia’s Supreme Court in 2003, with the ruling passed in secret and probably politically motivated (making it easier for Russia to send refugees back to Uzbekistan where they faced religious persecution for involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir). No explanation has ever been provided for why an organization not known to have committed terrorist attacks anywhere in the world should be so labelled, and the organization has always been legal in Ukraine.

Despite the lack of any grounds and in clear violation of international law which prohibits Russia from applying its legislation on occupied Ukrainian territory, Russia has been imprisoning Crimean Tatars (and a few other Ukrainian Muslims) on these charges since 2015. The sentences have been getting longer and longer (up to 20 years), as Russia openly targets Crimean Solidarity journalists and activists speaking out about repression in occupied Crimea.

In all such ‘cases’, at least one man is invariably charged with the more serious Article 205.5 § 1 of Russia’s criminal code (‘organizing a Hizb ut-Tahrir group’), while the others face the lesser charge of ‘involvement’ in the purported ‘group’, under Article 205.5 § 2. There is plenty of evidence from previous ‘trials’ that the more serious charge (carrying sentences of 17-20 years at present) are often laid in reprisal, for example, against Raim Aivazov for refusing to remain silent about the torture he faced from the FSB. The men will likely also be charged with ‘planning a violent uprising’ (Article 278). Once again, this is purely based on the 2003 Supreme Court ruling, with none of the political prisoners having ever been accused of actions or direct plans to commit any action aimed at ‘overthrowing the Russian constitutional order.’

The ‘evidence’ is as flawed as the charges. It hinges on FSB-loyal ‘experts’ providing ‘assessments’ of innocuous conversations about religion, Russian persecution, etc. to fit the prosecution and ‘anonymous witnesses’, whose testimony cannot be verified, and who may have never met the men.

Six families have been ripped apart, with children left traumatized and elderly parents facing never seeing their sons again.

Russia uses such arrests and ‘trials’ as a weapon against the Crimean Solidarity human rights movement and as an instrument of terror and propaganda against Crimean Tatars who have from the outset demonstrated so clearly their identification with Ukraine. The FSB are known to get promotion or bonuses for providing such ‘cases’ and can boast of ‘good statistics on fighting terrorism’.

Abdulmedzhit Seitumerov (b. 1999) was just 20 when the FSB came for his brothers, Seitumer Seitumerov (b. 1988) and Osman Seitumerov (b. 1992) and their uncle, Rustem Seitmemetov (b. 1973). For his parents, this was already a terrible blow, especially since Russia illegally imprisons the men thousands of kilometres from their homes. Now all three sons have been taken from them, and, if Russia is not stopped, Abdulmedzhit’s son Khamza, born on 5 July this year, will spend most of his childhood without his father. Abdulmedzhit had been active in Crimean Solidarity, speaking out in defence of his brothers and other political prisoners.

Ametkhan Umerov (b. 1986)

The 37-year-old Crimean Solidarity activist was detained and fined in July 2019 for a picket in Moscow in support of four Crimean Tatar political prisoners. He was one of 21 Crimean Tatars detained inh November 2021 for trying to stand outside an occupation ‘court’ during the appeal hearing in the case of three other political prisoners. Then in February 2022, he was jailed for several days for trying to attend a purportedly open (but political) ‘court’) hearing.

Ametkhan has three daughters and a son, all of them very young: Zamira (b. 2015); Khatidzha (b. 2017); Ali (b. 2019) and Zainab (b. 2021).

Seidamet Mustafayev (b. 1995)

Seidamet is just 28, but has faced several administrative prosecutions since 2017, when he was jailed for 10 days for taking part in what the occupation regime called an unsanctioned meeting (in fact, people standing outside in solidarity) during an armed search of the home of (now) political prisoner Seiran Saliyev. In 2021, he was also detained and fined for having tried to stand outside an occupation ‘court’ during a political hearing. In February 2022, he was also jailed for several days for trying to attend a purportedly open (but political) ‘court’) hearing.

Seidamet has four small children: Suleiman (b. 2014); Salsabil (b. 2016); Latifa (b. 2020) and Osman (b. 2023).

Remzi Nimetulayev (b. 1985)

Remzi was detained for the first time on 23 November 2021 when he came to the police holding unit in occupied Simferopol to greet lawyer Edem Semedlyaev, who had been jailed for 12 days for trying to carry out his professional duties. Remzi was jailed for 10 days.

He has five daughters: Aishe (b. 2009); Anife (b. 2019); Adile (b. 2013); Yasmina (b. 2016) and Alime (b. 2020).

Eldar Yakubov (b. 1980)

The 43-year-old was detained and fined on 25 October 2021 outside the Crimean occupation military ‘court’ during an appeal hearing against the sentences passed on three political prisoners.

He has four daughters and two sons: Safiye (b. 2004); Khalid (b. 2008); Meryem (b. 2013); Khamza (b. 2017); Selime (b. 2018) and Asiya (b. 2021).

Ruslan Asanov (b. 1975) is also a Crimean Solidarity activist.

Source: Halya Coynash, “Russian FSB seize Crimean Tatar family’s last son in new wave of terror against Crimean Solidarity activists,” Kharkhiv Human Rights Protection Group, 25 August 2023

Irina Danilovich: A Political Prisoner in Russian-Occupied Crimea

Irina Danilovich. Photo courtesy of Ivan Astashin

Who is Irina Danilovich? Why is she in a remand prison? How can we support her?

The wave of criminal cases directly related to anti-war stances sometimes obscures other politically motivated cases. I want to tell you about one of them.

Irina Danilovich worked as a nurse at Koktebel’s post-stroke rehabilitation center while being heavily involved in civic affairs. Irina can be called a grassroots activist, human rights defender, and journalist. She was, for example, the coordinator of the information campaign Crimean Medicine Without a Cover and in this capacity she harshly criticized the Crimean authorities during the coronavirus pandemic. Danilovich has collaborated with the alternative news website Injir Media and the human rights project Crimean Process. Radio Svoboda reports that Irina defended the interests of medical workers on the peninsula and wrote extensively about violations of their rights. Recently, writes Injir Media, Danilovich had been drawing attention to the war and related problems, including in the healthcare sector.

On April 29, 2022, Irina Danilovich was abducted by the FSB. She was found in the Simferopol pretrial detention center almost two weeks later.

As attorney Aider Azamatov discovered, Irina had been held in the FSB building for eight days, where officers made her take a lie-detector test and threatened to take her into the woods [and shoot her] if she concealed anything from them. She was fed once a day this entire time. After a week of torture, Danilovich was told to sign blank forms in exchange for her release. However, after complying with the demands of the security officers, Danilovich was not released, but sent to the pretrial detention center – allegedly, 200 grams of explosives were unexpectedly found in her eyeglass case.

It is quite obvious to me that the 200 grams of explosives “found” in the eyeglass case of the grassroots activist, journalist, and human rights defender are part of a politically motivated trumped-up criminal case. Especially since this is happening in Crimea. The Memorial Human Rights Center has repeatedly drawn attention to trumped-up criminal cases against Crimeans disloyal to the Russian authorities involving weapons, explosives or ammunition planted during searches.

Now Irina Danilovich is in jail. How can we help her? By doing all the usual things – getting the word about her case out, sending her letters and parcels (there are no restrictions on receiving parcels at the pretrial detention center), and holding solidarity actions.

Crimea became a lawless place after 2014, but public attention to Irina’s case can protect her from further mistreatment and enable her to live to see her release with minimal injuries.

Send letters and parcels to:

295006, Republic of Crimea, Simferopol, Lenin Blvd., 4, SIZО-1,

Danilovich Irina Bronislavovna (born 1979)

Free everyone!

Source: Ivan Astashin, Facebook, 25 May 2022. Translated by the Russian Reader

Bad Manicure

A woman with a yellow and blue manicure was detained in Yalta. Girls, be careful with the nails.

46-year-old Olga Dyachenko was detained following a complaint from a local resident. The man went to the translation agency where Olga works, and saw a woman with a manicure in the colors of a national traitor [sic]. One of Olga’s nails was decorated in yellow and blue, and the other could have been dubbed extremist per se: on the woman’s ring finger, the man made out the Right Sector’s red and black flag.

The woman told the police that she had been a citizen of Ukraine, but in 2021 she became a Russian citizen. She had had her manicure done two weeks earlier, and since that time no one had paid it any mind. Moreover, there was nothing suspicious about it: according to Olga, she had an ordinary multicolored manicure, and the man [who filed the complaint] had just imagined things.

The police interviewed Olga, photographed her hands, had a preventive conversation with her, and reported the manicure to the local FSB office — just in case. After her conversation with the police, the woman had the manicure removed.

Source: Baza (Telegram), 13 April 2022. Thanks to Maria Mila for the link. I have no idea whether the woman in the photo, above, is Olga Dyachenko, but this was the photo published along with the dispatch. Translated by the Russian Reader

Crimea, Russia

Source: Russia Beyond

Russian Diplomation

Dmitry Gudkov
Facebook
April 14, 2021

You, of course, have already seen this photo, which can even now be inserted into a history textbook to illustrate Russia’s foreign policy at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

The military attache of the Russian Federation in Latvia, Ruslan Ushakov, flipped off neighbors who complained about him for having a feast during the plague, that is, a party during the covid pandemic. Everything about the photo is lovely, including the fact that the attache hid from the police, but then ran back out into the yard. And the fact that he was rude from behind a fence, confident that no one could get at him here, and even that he favored the spiritless western fuck-you over the traditional Russian kukish (“fig”).

No director could have produced a better metaphor for the Russian authorities. When it comes to their thoughts, their families, and their wallets, they live in the West. They are terribly afraid of retribution, so the Magnitsky Law cuts them like a knife. They are rude to everyone around them when they know that they will not be able to get to them. Because in front of them, instead of a fence, we stand, unwitting or voluntary hostages.

And one more thing. Would you make indecent gestures to your neighbors, and so enthusiastically? I wouldn’t. Would you steal bicycles in a city? Deal drugs? What other exploits have Russian diplomats been up to recently?

Russian diplomats are the face of our country, and so this is how our country looks to the world. And in this case you cannot even say that there is no need to blame the mirror. I see myself in the mirror, not Ushakov and his fuck-yous. And you, too, are unlikely to recognize yourself in it. This is scum from the bottom of the pond that has floated to the surface. And while some people catch their fish in this muddy water, we are suffocating.

No, this is not what I was taught at the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Foreign Ministry in the early noughties.

_______________

Tensions between Russia and Ukraine have been growing for weeks following the breakdown of a ceasefire in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, which Russia invaded in 2014, and a massing of Russian forces nearby. Yesterday Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s defence minister, admitted that Russia had built up two armies and three airborne units on its western borders for “combat-training exercises”. Russian amphibious vessels have also moved from the Caspian to the Black Sea. Ukraine claims that there are 40,000 Russian troops on its eastern border and 40,000 more in Crimea. Tod Wolters, the commander of America’s European Command, said the build-up “mirrors the size and scope and scale” of that which preceded Russia’s previous invasion. But war might not be Russia’s ultimate goal. It may just be to intimidate Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, into offering concessions over Donbas—such as greater autonomy for pro-Russian separatists—and to test just how far America and Europe will go in supporting Ukraine.
-The Economist Espresso, 14 April 2021

Geolocations of Russian military equipment movements on the borders of Ukraine: an interactive map

Russia has deployed a field hospital on the border with Ukraine – German media (photos, videos)
Fokus
April 14, 2021

Russian military camp south of Voronezh Photo: Tagesschau

To the south of Voronezh, the Russian military has built an entire tent city, equipped with a field kitchen and guarded by military police

The Russian army has deployed a huge field military camp near the Ukrainian border, south of Voronezh, which includes a field hospital, as reported by the German news program Tagesschau.

“The entire field is filled with military equipment. You can’t walk there, let alone drive. With their chains and wheels, they plowed up the whole field,” a local resident told the program.

Israel Defense Forces officer and military analyst Yigal Levin noted in a column for Fokus that the deployment of field hospitals is a grave sign of preparations for full-scale military operations.

According to Tagesschau, eyewitnesses told them that the military has built a whole town out of tents. Flags are flying everywhere, smoke is coming from smoke vents, military trucks with water tanks are constantly passing by, and a field kitchen is up and running.

The field camp is patrolled by military police.

All evidence suggests, Tagesschau notes, that the Russian servicemen have settled in this area for the long haul and are not going to leave quickly.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday, April 13, that all “verification activities” currently taking place near the borders of Ukraine and involving the participation of Russian servicemen, were scheduled to be completed “within two weeks.”

Also, an interactive map tracing the movements of Russian troops toward the borders of Ukraine has appeared on the internet. It records all instances of the transfer of Russian army equipment, weapons and personnel to the borders of Ukraine and to occupied Crimea.

Iskander operational-tactical missile system units from the Western Military District have been delivered to Voronezh, ostensibly to participate in a parade.

In turn, at a meeting with the French Ambassador to Ukraine, Ukrainian Defense Minister Andriy Taran said that Russia is capable of preparing the “Georgia 2008” scenario.

Thanks to Yigal Levin for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader

Russia’s War on “Terrorists” and “Extremists” in Crimea and Syria

filatov Persecuted Crimean Jehovah’s Witness Sergei Filatov faces seven years in prison for “extremism.” Photo courtesy of Grati

Prosecutor Requests Seven Years in High-Security Prison for Jehovah’s Witness in Crimea
OVD Info
February 25, 2020

During closing arguments in the trial of local resident Sergei Filatov, who organized meetings of Jehovah’s Witnesses, the prosecutor asked the Dzhankoy District Court to sentence Filatov to seven years in a high-security penal colony, according to the online publication Grati, which cited Filatov himself as its source.

Filatov, who is currently free on his own recognizance, is accused of “organizing the activities of an extremist organization,” punishable under Article 282.2.1 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code. According to investigators, Filatov, as the head of a religious organization, “undermined the foundations of the constitutional system and the security of the state.” The case files include an audio recording, made by local FSB field officer Vladislav Stradetsky, in which Filatov and other believers can be heard discussing religious topics.

The prosecution claims that Filatov is a co-organizer of a Jehovah’s Witness organization called Sivash, which held gatherings and religious lectures at the defendant’s registered domicile.

The only witness at the previous hearings in Filatov’s trial was a man named Verbitsky, a computer science teacher at a rural school. In September 2019, he testified that he had gone to Jehovah’s Witness gatherings right up until the organization was banned in April 2017, and therefore was unaware of Filatov’s further actions. In November 2019, however, he changed his testimony, saying he had continued attending meetings of believers for another six months or so.

Verbitsky claimed the defendant was intimidating him, so the judge honored his request to hold the hearings in closed chambers. The website Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia reports that the “intimidation” in question was phone calls from strangers. The defense made several requests to hold the trial in open chambers, but to no avail.

Filatov has four children, two of whom are minors. He considers the trial biased, and the whole case an instance of religious persecution.

“The prosecutor asked the judge to sentence me to seven years for extremist activity—seven years for religious convictions, for believing in God. There was no crime, no culpability. 1951 and 1937 are coming back. They happened in Russia and here [in Crimea]: there are people among us today who were persecuted and sent into exile. This is tyranny and genocide,” Grati reports Filatov as saying after the trial.

In November 2018, the security forces raided a number of homes of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Dzhankoy. Searches were conducted at several dozen addresses, but only Filatov was detained, allegedly because police found extremist literature and manuals on psychology and recruiting in his home.

On April 20, 2017, the Russian Supreme Court declared the Administrative Center of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia an “extremist organization,” disbanded it, and prohibited it from operating in Russia. In August 2017, all Jehovah’s Witness organizations were placed on the official list of banned organizations, sparking a subsequent wave of criminal cases against members of the confession.

Translated by the Russian Reader

_______________________

Putin: Our Forces Stopped a Serious Threat to Russia in Syria
Asharq Al-Aswat
February 24, 2020

President Vladimir Putin has revealed a decisive Russian military attack last week to prevent Turkish-backed Syrian opposition factions from advancing towards Neirab city.

The Russian military has rooted out well-equipped terrorist groups in Syria and prevented major threats to Russia, Putin said at a gala on Defender of the Fatherland Day.

The attack was followed by intense airstrikes on militant sites in Idlib province.

Putin’s statements came in line with accusations launched by the Kremlin against Turkey on its violation of the Sochi Agreement.

According to Russian sources, the military sought to prevent Ankara from trying to impose a new fait accompli by controlling sites that have been recently occupied by the regime.

Russia “will not allow the return of the previous situation, when Idlib province and its surrounding areas were under the control of Syrian factions,” the sources added.

Putin, however, revealed on Sunday another aim for his country’s intervention in Syria.

Russia’s officers and soldiers have confidently confirmed their high professionalism and combat capabilities, the strength of spirit and their best qualities during the military operation in Syria, he said.

“They have wiped out large and well-equipped terrorist groups, thwarted major threats for our motherland at distant frontiers, and helped the Syrians save the sovereignty of their country,” he stressed, thanking all soldiers who have participated in the fight in Syria.

Putin’s remarks highlighted information circulated on Ankara supplying the Syrian factions with US mobile anti-air systems, which enabled them to shoot down two Syrian army helicopters last week.

The Ministry of Defense said these weapons could be used against Russian forces, slamming Ankara and Washington.

It said both sides “cannot predict how and when the terrorists will use these weapons.”

Putin affirmed Moscow’s intention to continue to enhance its military capabilities and provide its armed forces with the most advanced arms, including laser weapons, hypersonic systems and high-precision systems.

Oleg Sentsov: “Don’t Believe Putin”

sentsov Oleg Sentsov and David Sassoli at the Sakharov Prize award ceremony. Photo courtesy of Deutsche Welle

“Don’t Believe Putin,” or, What Advice Sakharov Prize Winner Sentsov Gave the European Union
Yuri Sheyko
Deutsche Welle
November 26, 2019

Andrei Sakharov, Nelson Mandela… Oleg Sentsov could never have imagined his name would be on a par with these people.

“This is a great honor and a great responsibility,” the Ukrainian filmmaker said during his appearance at the European Parliament.

It was there on November 26 that he was finally given the Sakharov Prize he had been awarded in 2018. This was the second award ceremony. There was an empty chair in the plenary hall in Strasbourg a year ago because Sentsov was still being held in a Russian penal colony. After the exchange of prisoners between Ukraine and Russia in early September, the European Parliament held a new ceremony in which the Ukrainian was able to participate.

Sentsov Warns EU Politicians
The ceremony on Tuesday was simple. The president of the European Parliament, David Sassoli, spoke before yielding the floor to the prizewinner. Sentsov briefly mused about what the Sakharov Prize meant to him before quickly segueing to his main message.

“There is a lot of talk nowadays about reconciliation with Russia, about negotiations. I don’t believe Putin, and I would urge you not to believe him. Russia and Putin will definitely deceive you. They don’t want peace in Donbass, they don’t want peace for Ukraine. They want to see Ukraine on its knees,” Sentsov said.

His words were in stark contrast to the high expectations for the summit of the so-called Normandy Four, scheduled for December 9 in Paris, as well as French President Emmanuel Macron’s desire to normalize relations with Russia. Sentsov thus had advice for all EU politicians.

He said that every time one of them thought about extending the hand of friendship to Putin over the heads of Ukrainians, they should also think about every one of the thirteen thousand people who have perished in the war in Donbass, about the Ukrainian political prisoners still held in Russia, about the Crimean Tatars, who face arrest at any minute in annexed Crimea, and about the Ukrainian soldiers “in the trenches, risking their lives for our freedom and your freedom.”

Laconic as usual, Sentsov spoke for less than five minutes, but it was enough to elicit applause from both MEPs and visitors. The balcony was nearly full with visitors and journalists. Most MEPs were also present for the ceremony. There were only empty seats on the edges of the assembly hall, where left and right populists sit. Members of both groupings took their places several minutes after Sentsov left the dais so they could take part in voting.

Sentsov: “No Happy Ending”
The ceremony lasted less than half an hour: no speeches by or questions from MEPs were on the program. Many of them thought this was not enough, however, so the day before the ceremony, on the evening of November 25, the foreign affairs and development committees, along with the human rights subcommittee, which are responsible for the Sakharov Prize, hosted a conversation with Sentsov.

When Sentsov arrived at the event, MEPs lined up to greet him or have their picture taken with him. The session was thus delayed for five minutes or so.

Many of the MEPs who spoke at the meeting praised Sentsov’s courage.

“I admire and respect you not only for your courage, but also for your perseverance. You emerged a winner. And so we are very happy that you are free. By your example, you can inspire people to fight for freedom not only in Ukraine and Europe, but also around the world where there are dictatorships,” observed Sandra Kalniete, a Latvian MEP for the European People’s Party.

However, the praise did not make a big impression on the Ukrainian. He thanked the MEPs for supporting Ukraine in the struggle against Russian aggression, but reminded them the struggle was not over.

“There was no happy ending when I was released,” Sentsov said, reminding the MEPs that over one hundred Ukrainian political prisoners were still behind bars in Russia, and Russian-backed separatists in Donbass held over two hundred captives.

Sentsov’s Creative Plans
Kalniete’s voice was filled with emotion, and she even apologized for being so flustered. Perhaps it was emotion that made foreign affairs committee chair David McAllister mistakenly identify Sentsov as a “Russian” filmmaker, but he immediately corrected himself.

“As a Ukrainian filmmaker and writer, you have been a very harsh critic of Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea,” McAllister said.

The MEPs peppered their guest with questions and requests for political advice, but after the first round of speeches by representatives of all the factions who wished to attend the event, Sentsov had nothing more to say.

McAllister decided to take a creative approach.

“There is a second round [of speeches] in this ‘movie.’ You’re a director, and I’m an actor, but this time it’s the other way around. You can say whatever you want, especially about your experience with the Russians,” he said.

After a few more questions, Sentsov no longer refrained from comment.

Speaking about the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, under which Ukraine relinquished the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for assurances regarding its territorial integrity, Sentsov said, “Since they [Russian] took Crimea from us, they can return our bombs.”

If the MEPs had reacted enthusiastically to many of the Sakharov Prize laureate’s statements, there was a heavy silence in the room after he said this. Subsequently, he had to explain what he meant more than once. In an interview with Deutsche Welle, he assured us it had not been an “actual” proposal.

“It’s not a call to return [our] nuclear weapons, but an argument in negotiations: where it all began and what we need to get back to,” Sentsov underscored.

He believes negotiations in the Normandy and Minsk formats are a dead end, and sees the possibility of a real solution to the problem of Donbass and Crimea when Vladimir Putin ceases to be the president of Russia.

“And then Ukraine, Europe, and the whole world should be ready to take a tough stance on the return of those territories,” he said.

The MEPs also asked Sentsov about his plans for the future. The director confirmed he intends to finish shooting the film Rhino first. He interrupted work on the film when the Euromaidan protests, in which he was involved, kicked off. The director has written screenplays for five films, which he would like to shoot in five years. Sentsov warned, however, that he did not mix creative work with public life, so we should not expect him to make films about his time in prison, Maidan or Crimea.

Translated by the Russian Reader

Olga Romanova: How “Law Enforcement” Works in Russia

calvey
Michael Calvey in court. Photo by Maxim Shemetov. Courtesy of Reuters and Republic

“We Give You Serebrennikov and You Give us Calvey”: How Law Enforcement Works
Olga Romanova
Republic
May 13, 2019

“Who would make the decision about your arrest?”

“My colleagues would betray me, but they would vet it with my bosses.”

“What about Vasya [a big businessman]?”

“Cops, the economic security squad. It’s enough for the word to come down from the district office to grab him. Vasya is a respected person. He’s a thief.”

“And me?”

“You’re an enemy of the state. If the neighborhood cops can decide to arrest Vasya, the Secret Chamber, so to speak, would have to give the orders to arrest you. The decision to arrest you would be made by no one lower ranked than Bortnikov’s deputy, although you’re naked and barefoot, and no one would ask the prosecutor’s office or the Investigative Committee to go after you. It’s creepy and pointless.”

This should give you an idea of the conversations I have with my acquaintances in the security forces nowadays. It helps to do business with people who know the score. None of them is surprised when you ask them who would arrest someone, how they would do it, and when they would do it. Everything would have been planned long ago, and there are no illusions. If a person has to be placed under arrest and charged, it is going to happen. If they do not need to be indicted, they can be kept in custody for a while. No one remembers, even for appearance’s sake, that there are courts in Russia, and courts decide whether to remand someone in custody after hearing arguments by all the interested parties. Everyone knows the decisions are not made in court.

Who Makes the Decisions?
Who made the decision to arrest Kirill Serebrennikov? Who decided to let him go for the time being? Who arrested Michael Calvey and the employees of Baring Vostok? Who let them out of jail? Why? Who made the decision to arrest Mikhail Abyzov?

There is no one with whom you can talk about these cases.

This is not quite true. My sources in all the law enforcement and security agencies, who can be frank with me as long as they remain anonymous, talk to me about these cases, too, but they look really worried when they do.

Rank-and-file law enforcement officers are confused. They do not understand why someone decided to back off the Serebrennikov case so abruptly and quickly. The train was rushing the director and filmmaker towards a sentence of the four years or so in the camps when a powerful hand jerked hard on the brakes. The passengers jumped off the train, of course, for they didn’t want to keep traveling in that direction, but the trainmaster, driver, and conductors were completely at a loss.

What should they do with the next train and its contingent of VIP passengers? Should they railroad them, as they were ordered to do, or should they avoid hurrying the case? After the emergency brake has been pulled, everyone emerges with injuries and bumps. Some of the crew were counting on promotions after they had wrapped up such a big case. Other members of the crew were acting on orders from a celestial. He will not forgive them because now they know there are tougher celestials in the system. He cannot forgive the people involved in the case for knowing that fact nor can he forgive the other celestials for intervening. The passengers could not care less. Either they get to where they are going or they do not get there, but the crew is always aboard the train.

True, a smart alec from the Investigative Committee told me something interesting about the procedural aspect.

“Why is everyone so angry? The Serebrennikov case was sent back to the prosecutor’s office, so what? You saw that the court ordered a forensic examination. The first forensic examination was really crooked. The judge in the trial of Serebrennikov’s accountant, Nina Maslyaeva, wondered why everyone was so glad. Serebrennikov’s case would now be sent back to the prosecutor’s office because his circumstances are the same as Maslyaeva’s. You are mixing up cause and effect. The judge in the Maslyaeva case cannot reach a verdict because he understands the outcome of the forensic examination, which was the same as in the Serebrennikov case, will now be different, and Maslayeva will have to be re-indicted in the light of the new forensic examination in the Serebrennikov case.”

Translated into ordinary language, he means the case can still go any which way. Procedurally, all the cards are still on the table, and the haggling could continue. Things could go one way or the other. The powers that be could change their minds and send Serebrennikov to prison, but they could also let him go. They could arrest him again and send him down. The statute of limitations is a flexible thing.

Somewhere above the clouds, the thunder gods fight over the case. Invisible to the world, they communicate with ordinary people by making motions to conduct additional forensic examinations. Ordinary people make of it what they will. Police investigators are also part of the rank and file, part and parcel of Russia’s unwashed masses.

In ordinary times, this is not what happens to ordinary defendants in ordinary cases. Everyone would have gone down five years each per capita, and no would have batted an eye. In this case, the decisions are obviously political. Look who made the decision! Who telephoned whom? What levers did they use? Who or what did they offer in exchange? Freebies are for freaks, after all. We will return to this subsequently when we discuss other factors.

If the boring procedural hypothesis made by my anonymous source at the Investigative Committee is right, events should unfold as follows. The authorities will get the results of the new forensic examination in the Serebrennikov case. If the total damages are less than was claimed earlier (or, say, there were, miraculously, no damages at all), the charges against Serebrennikov and the other defendants will be dropped right in the courtroom. If, on the contrary, the sum of the damages is more or less hefty, a million rubles, at least, the defendants will be found guilty and sentenced to prison. Then you can appeal the verdict wherever you like.

No one would ask why a particular ruling was made. No one would ask what happened. Why are some people treated one way, while others are treated another way? The foot soldiers of law enforcement know the score. But when they do not know the score, they know it is better not to ask whether a mistake has been made but to follow orders.

How Things Go Down
The Calvey case bears a strong resemblance to the case against Vladimir Yevtushenkov. Yevtushenkov failed to take the hints. He was told directly what to do but refused to hand over his business. Then he was arrested and given a good talking. He and his captors came to an understanding. He was released and his business confiscated. Unlike Yevtushenkov, however, Calvey is as poor as a church mouse. Compared with Yevtushenkov, that is. Calvey does not own a Bashneft, after all.

The foot soldiers in the security forces have not been particularly surprised about how the Calvey case has unfolded. They expected something of the sort. They expected him to “cash out,” as they call it, and they believe he has, in fact, cashed out. They are uninterested in what this meant. It is not their war, and the spoils are not theirs to claim.

We should look at this more closely.

My source, whom I trust, albeit warily, explains the obvious to me.

“All cases are business as usual except the cases in which there a phone call,” he says.

I have two questions for him right off the bat. What does he mean by “business as usual”? Who usually makes the “phone call”?

He explains that people who follow high-profile cases and comment on them fail to take one important factor into account in their arguments. The high-profile cases are handled by another agency as it were. They involve the same players: the prosecutor’s offices, the courts, the remand prisons, and the Investigative Committee. All of them realize, however, when they are handling a special case involving the interests of high-ranking officials and elite businessmen. In these cases, they need to keep close track of which way the wind blows.

The bulk of cases are “mundane.” There is a huge number of such cases, and they can drag on forever. Take, for example, the Baltstroy case, the case of police anti-corruption investigator Boris Kolesnikov, and the case of ex-deputy culture minister Grigory Pirumov, cases that everyone has forgotten, and the Oboronservis case, the cases of the banks implicated in the so-called Russian Laundromat, and the case of Alexander Grigoriev, the man, allegedly, behind the Laundromat, who was mixed up with Putin’s cousin Igor Putin. New indictments in these cases are made all the time. More and more defendants are convicted in these cases and sent down. It never stops, but public interest in these cases is almost nil.

There are cases that collapse, however. Why does this happen?

Why was the case of ex-economics minister Alexei Ulyukayev not reviewed on appeal? Why was his prison sentence not reduced by four years during the sentencing appeal hearing? Does anyone know why? Perhaps the political spin doctors get it, but Russia’s law enforcers do not have a clue. What they understand is when an order comes down to reduce a sentence and when it does not. They leave the blabbing to the spin doctors.

Alexei Fedyarov is a former prosecutor from Chuvashia. Nowadays, he is the head of our legal department at Russia Behind Bars. He gave me permission to quote him.

“It happens. A case is going fine. In the morning, you have a meeting with your superiors. They tell you everything is great, keep pushing, you’ve got the bastards. I was handling a case against the management of the Khimprom factory in Novocheboksarsk. At briefings, I was told my group and I were doing a great job. We had done the initial investigation beautifully and now it was time to detain the suspects, remand them in custody, and put them away. I went to my office, where the city prosecutor was waiting for me. He asked me to hand over the case file. I gave him the case file and he told me it was over, I should forget it. He was personally going to deliver the case file to the head prosecutor of the republic and that would be the end of it. There would be no supporting documentation or anything. The case really did disappear, although an hour before I had been told to push it.

“During that hour, the head prosecutor of the republic had got a message from the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office. A call from a deputy prosecutor general was enough for them to take the whole thing back, despite the fact it was a big, interesting case involving illegal wiretapping throughout the company and even the local police department and the tax police office. We had found tons of recorded conversations: they recorded everything. They were trying to protect themselves and investigate other people.”

Sources of the “Telephone Call”
How does the “telephone call” work?

The “telephone call” is a conventional name for the outcome of lengthy negotiations. We see only the reflection of this process: Calvey’s arrest, his transfer to house arrest, Serebrennikov’s arrest and his release on his own recognizance, Abyzov’s arrest.

I am going to quote my anonymous source verbatim. In this instance, the way he says what he says is as important as what he says.

“Anyone can hit the brakes. It could be Bortnikov. It could be Chaika. But it is the outcome of agreements among people, not an arbitrary decision. They do not do things that way. Maybe new factors have been brought into play, but there has to be someone who wants to negotiate on behalf of the accused person, who appeals on his behalf. He would be told, ‘Okay, fine. But you have to give us such-and-such in exchange.” Then it is a matter of talking with Lebedev [Chief Justice of the Russian Supreme Court] and everything is put into reverse. It could be like, ‘We’ll give up Serebrennikov if you take the heat off Calvey.’ You see, the siloviki are not all on the same side. There is no longer one side. Not even everyone in the FSB or its departments is on the same side. The Constitutional Department fights with the Anti-Terrorism Department. It’s the same thing in the prosecutor’s office and the Investigative Committee. In the Investigative Committee, there is the group loyal to Bastrykin and then they are the boys from the North Caucasus. There are also the guys from Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, who are filthy rich but live orderly lives and are also capable of getting things done.

“Anything goes at this level. Why are you inclined to exaggerate how this works? Number One basically does not care about this stuff.”

I should try and explain.

The Investigative Committee and Prosecutor General’s Office are still at serious loggerheads. The conflict has even intensified. It is a personal conflict and a clash of business interests and a fight over resources. The amount of resources has not grown. On the contrary, there are palpably fewer resources. Relations between the Investigative Committee and the Prosecutor General’s Office are currently not just strained, they are intolerably strained.

In court, they take the same side, but those are the rules of the game. If a case has gone to trial, you cannot come out against your colleagues: you would be digging yourself a hole. As a prosecutor, you did not reverse the indictment. You were involved in prolonging the suspect’s custody in remand prison, and you seconded all the motions made by the case investigator. The case investigator, of course, always plays along with the prosecutor. In criminal trials, they are the prosecution.

Even the “groundlings” find it easier to make a deal. The big bosses may be at war with each other, but down on the ground, the workhorses plow away and know the score. There is no love lost for Bastrykin among Investigative Committee officers just as prosecutors are not fond of Chaika. But it is like this everywhere: people like their bosses only when they are standing right in front of them. There is a certain difference, however. Chaika and his deputies at the Prosecutor General’s Office are all former case investigators. They have paid their dues. Bastrykin does not have this background: he is not a criminologist. Their workhorses thus complain about different things. Bastrykin’s underlings complain about incompetence, while prosecutors grouse about their bosses’ passion for business.

The Investigative Committee and the Prosecutor’s Office have an innate tendency to divide up into clans, which are defined geographically: there are Circassian clans, Bashkir clans, etc. They are local fraternities of sorts, and they do not go away when someone moves and transfers to a new job. The clans are often at odds with each other. This is something you must always factor in when dealing with Russian law enforcers.

Internal disunity has also been increasing day by day in the conglomerate known as the FSB. Even mid-level officers have trouble getting along. For example, M Directorate, which oversees the Interior Ministry, the Federal Penitentiary Service, and so on, is often combined, in many regions, with the Economic Security Department, and there is a big problem with compatibility in terms of the cases they pursue. But there is also K Directorate, aka the 8th Directorate, which oversees banks and the financial system. Regarded as “blue bloods,” they are strongly disliked by other FSB officers.

“A guy from K Directorate worked out at the World Class gym where I worked out. His driver took him to work in a Maybach. Now he has transferred his membership to the gym in Zhukovka. A membership there costs 600,000 rubles a year [approx. $9,500] and the swimming pool is filled with mineral water. ‘My clients work out there,’ he said to me, ‘so I moved my membership there,'” an athlete and retired FSB veteran told me.

The FSB’s Constitutional and Anti-Terrorism Departments are a whole other story. They oversee everyone who has any dealings with the opposition and they inspire no confidence whatsoever. For example, I am flattered Kirill Serebrennikov and I are overseen by the same FSB officers. But we are overseen by officers from the Constitutional Department, while the Anti-Terrorism Department are working-class blokes who specialize in completely different cases. They were merged into a single directorate in which the Anti-Terrorism Department, supposedly, is subordinated to the Constitutional Department. Naturally, they cannot stand each other.

What about the top bosses? They are busy with other things, which is why they are in charge. They are busy with politicking and intrigues. These quiet squabbles surface as cases like the recent arrest of Colonel Kirill Cherkalin from K Directorate. Did he really take a bribe? Maybe he did: anything is possible. It is more likely, however, he was arrested as part of a war for turf, turf that has been shrinking exponentially with every passing day. Fattened cows no longer graze on this turf: there are basically no cows left to milk. The entire herd has been devoured.

What to Expect
I will quote in full the monologue my anonymous source delivered when I asked him about the future. I do no think there is any need to decode it.

“The turbulence will increase. Until all the issues with Russia’s natural gas and its transit through Ukraine are settled, Number One won’t have time for things happening here. They have been outsourced to our guys. They have been told to go and bite everyone’s heads off. They have temporary permission to do it.

“But there are few fat cats. All the money has been sent abroad. Everyone is living on loans. All of Rublyovka is up to their ears in loans. There will be searches in some people’s homes, and some folks will be ripped to shreds. There will be a lot of this kind of stuff this year. The government will be purged, too. People love this sort of thing.

“Abyzov made no impression on anyone. No one understood what it was about. The only thing people will remember is that he offered to pay a billion rubles in bail. No one will forget him and the billion rubles.

“Circumstances are such that even the system’s insiders cannot make any forecasts. The settings are changing constantly. There is no stable paradigm.

“It is like with water. At room temperature, we understand how it acts. You can stick your finger in it and blow on it. But now it is being warmed. It has not boiled yet and vaporized, but you do not know what to do with it and how it will act next.

“The tax police are busy with major shakedowns. They are kicking everyone’s ass. When we ask them why they are doing it, they reply, ‘Crimea is ours, and our job is to get people to make additional payments.’ But additional payments and penalties are different things, especially penalties meant to wipe people out. They are going after people’s last rubles.

“I have a friend who works as a business court judge on tax cases. Whereas earlier, when she would be asked why she reduced a claim from one hundred million rubles to ten million, she could have an off-the-record chat with the head judge of the court and explain she was doing it so the person could keep their business, such chats are not kosher nowadays.

“Hard times are coming. The Syrian project fell through, and Russia failed to get control of the pipeline going through Turkey. Nothing that was planned in Syria has worked out, and both the South Stream and Nord Stream projects fell through [sic]. Nor will they replace the Ukrainian transit, although that was the goal. But it impossible to exit Syria, and now they have butted their noses in Venezuela. Their luck has been bad. People’s nerves are on edge up top.

“Number One is interested only in oil and gas, and so other parties have got involved in the game. If it were up to Number One, he would crush everyone and no one would breathe another word. He probably decided the lower ranks should take care of this stuff themselves. The very top bosses are not concerned with these matters at all right now. The lower ranks are running things and a huge amount of haggling has been happening. We are witnessing a classic turf war.”

Welcome to the magical world of turbulence in a pot of boiling water.

Olga Romanova is the director of Russia Behind Bars, a charitable foundation that aids Russian convicts and their families, people who have been victimized by the Russian justice system. Translated by the Russian Reader

Five Crimean Tatars Sentenced to as Long as 17 Years in Prison in Rostov-on-Don

The Crimean Tatar national flag. Courtesy of Wikipedia

Five Crimean Tatars Sentenced to as Many as 17 Years in Prison in Rostov-on-Don
Anton Naumlyuk
Radio Svoboda
June 18, 2019

The North Caucasus Military Court in Rostov-on-Don has rendered a verdict in the Simferopol Hizb ut-Tahrir trial.

Five Crimean Tatars were detained after searches of their homes in October 2016. They were charged with involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir, an organization that has been banned in Russia. One of the five defendants, Teimur Abdullayev, was also charged with organizing cells for the organization in Simferopol.

During closing arguments, the prosecution has asked the court to sentence the defendants to between 11 and 17 years in prison. However, except for Abdullayev, who was sentenced to 17 years in a maximum-security prison camp, the other four defendants were given longer sentences than the prosecutor had requested. Uzeir Abdullayev was sentenced to 13 years in prison. Emil Jemandenov and Ayder Saledinov were sentenced to 12 years in prison, while Rustem Ismailov was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

The convicted men had pleaded innocent to the charges. Their defense team plans to appeal the verdict.

“We are not terrorists. We have not committed any crimes,” Uzeir Abdullayev said in his closing statement. “I would also like to say that the criminal case [against us] was a frame-up, a fabrication. The secret witness alone was proof of that—and he was proof of our innocence. […] I thus want to show that human rights are violated in Russia and you violate your own Constitution.”

Nearly 70 individuals have been arrested in Crimea, occupied by Russia since 2014, as part of the criminal investigation into Hizb ut-Tahrir, an organization that is not illegal in Ukraine and most European countries. Most of the suspects and defendants in the case, include the Crimean Muslims convicted today, have been declared political prisoners by the International Memorial Society, an alliance of human rights organizations headquartered in Moscow.

Translated by the Russian Reader